Vasile Cătărău uses ceramic materials and methods to create objects that reflect the relationship between concept, form and phenomena involved in delivering concepts of form. Thus, the artist is studying the becoming and the behavior of these works depending on the components – the geometric shape and the reactions of the four basic elements.

What initially seemed to be a demonstration of Platonic concepts of idea and form, these objects are gradually composing a formal vocabulary that expresses processes, transformations and conditions – both material and spiritual –, defining realities of our world of imperfect reflections.

For this endeavor ceramics seem to be the most appropriate medium. Using the four elements – earth, water, air, fire – in the process of creation connects the artist to the basic phenomena of the world, both on the immediate and the metaphorical level.

Vasile Cătărău (Galaţi, 1993) studied ceramics at the Dimitrie Cuclin Art School. He is currently studying for a master’s degree in Ceramics-Glass at the University of Fine Arts and Design in Cluj. He also studied at the Art University in Bilbao with Erasmus mobility (2013–2014). He debuted with the exhibition entitled Angular Spheres in Bilbao, Cluj and Galaţi. In 2013 he won the Young Artist Award at the Cluj International Ceramics Biennale.

Opening and film screening

Exhibition

MEDLEY SALON - implying series of artworks selected qualitatively, with no thematic or stylistic constraints - presents at Quadro Gallery, until the end of August, the artworks to be directly purchased on QuadroShop. During these two months, the exhibition will undergo permanent changes, new artworks taking the place of sold ones. During the Salon, we will also organize micro-exhibitions, with selections from works by modern masters. These novelties will also be on display on QuadroShop.

Opening

The classic artistic function of the shroud, known since the ancient Greeks, of veiling the reproduced form, is to emphasize anatomy, movement and gravity. A different use of it is in the Turin Shroud, where it acts as a medium, preserving the imprint of the face it has previously touched. The newest digital and digitally altered photographs by István Feleki goes counter such uses of the shroud , which appears in his neither as veiling or emphasizing agent nor as significant, image-bearing medium, but as the protagonist of the work: it covers the original image, the model, and it adopts a totally independent visual existence.

Opening

Exhibition

Let us think of those moments when in the cold we were trying to make the pen work: blowing its tip, rubbing its refill in our palms, and eventually, trying to leave some marks on the paper. First, there were just some scratches, then lines, circles, scribblings drawn by the ink itself. The appearance of the coloured line was a real joy for us, a tiny achievement. The beginning of something.

The drawings of Diana Oțet – be it thematic notebook cut-outs (Nightmares and Dreams, Notes and Plans, Smooth Misery) or more complex graphic sheets – remind us of this operation in which we had no other initial expectation but to make the pen write. Subsequently, when the instrument proves its utility, the first drawn mark may be the seed of thought which opens a wide range of opportunities.

Thus, Diana exploits drawings in its multiple conditions: wrinting, annotation, analysis and study (anatomical, geometric, microscopic). The observation and contemplation of immediate reality, of nearby things, events and creatures make her question the underlying mechanisms. Graphical observations are guided towards the search of the beginning (of creatures of forms), the artist who drew them trying to understand that mysterious order behind everything and everyone.

The careful observer puts into contribution not only her sensibility, but also analytical spirit specific to natural science in order to remodel the paths of becoming and coagulation. Drawing becomes the act of recongnition, being tightly connected with life. Better yet, it becomes a lifestyle – as we have seen with ,,draghtsmen" like Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Klee or Ștefan Bertalan.

Diana Oțet (1987) lives and works in Cluj. In the present she is a DLA student at the University of Art and Design in Cluj.